The worst-kept secret in sports media right now is that the NFL will almost certainly opt out of its current media rights agreements following the 2029 season.
While still a few years off, the league’s option can be seen as a ticking time bomb for traditional media companies that rely on NFL programming to float affiliate fees from cable and satellite providers; fees that ultimately keep the lights on for their declining businesses. Come 2029, when the NFL can seek new deals with other partners, it’s safe to expect an enormous shift in the overall media landscape.
Tech giants like Netflix, Google, and Amazon will certainly want a large piece of the NFL pie. Broadcast networks like Fox or CBS, with far less capital to throw around, will fight to keep as much NFL inventory as possible for fear of extinction. The robust market for rights, driven by opportunity for the tech companies and desperation for the traditional media companies, will shoot fees up to stratospheric levels.
According to one analyst, the NFL has all of the leverage. It might find a unique way to fully exert its monopoly power as the only purveyor of monoculture left in the United States.
Appearing on The Main Event with Andrew Marchand podcast, Robert Fishman of the media research firm MoffettNathanson suggested that the NFL could sell its best games to Netflix (or another tech company) while leaving legacy broadcasters paying more but fighting for scraps.
“If they are interested in sports and the NFL opts out, which I think we’re all expecting will happen after ’29, why won’t the NFL try to redo some of their packages so that NFL can still say that they’re going for the premium package, the most eventized type of package, but just looks different from what we know today,” Fishman said. “So it’s not just the holiday package, but maybe it’s the best games every week. And that doesn’t necessarily have to be a certain day or night, but it can be almost like the Premier League, where they get the premium teams.
“And then think about who else is going to be left over for the broadcast networks and the traditional media guys to compete and fight over that type of package. So, to us, it just looks maybe different than what we all know today,” the analyst suggested.
“So when you look at it, you’re saying they could just get a lot of Cowboy games, basically, the Super Bowl champion. How do you foresee that working? And obviously, the other partners are not going to be happy about that. How do you see that?” Marchand asked.
“Well, right. I mean, clearly the other partners won’t be happy losing premium games, but it comes back to what can they afford to pay up for the next time the NFL is looking to renew their deals,” Fishman replied. “And if they opt out early, I think we all would expect the NFL to continue to have the leverage here.
“So on this new negotiation…how can the NFL structure these deals differently so that there still is a package that some of the traditional media guys can still afford to pay up for? So, pay up for more, but get less. That seems to be where traditional media guys are going. We just saw that over the last negotiation. So at the same time, when we think about going forward, I think the NFL will restructure their deals so that you will have Netflix compete with Amazon for those premium type of rights.”
What Fishman is suggesting here is a total upheaval of the status quo. Rather than keeping the traditional packages of games together, like Fox’s NFC-centric and CBS’s AFC-centric packages, the NFL could choose to take its marquee teams, like the Dallas Cowboys and the Kansas City Chiefs, and sell those games as “premium” inventory to a streamer.
The league already does this somewhat, granting marquee games to NBC’s Sunday Night Football each week. But singling out the highest-wattage teams and selling that inventory separately would be another thing entirely. It’s a move that would likely be unpopular with fans, but it would maximize revenue for the league.
Whether the NFL will take this dramatic step remains to be seen. Still, if it wants to divvy up its inventory to make everybody, from new-age streamers to traditional broadcast networks, happy (or, more accurately, keeps everybody equally unhappy), this would be one way to do it.